I was presented a mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 twin turbo as a rolling basket case and just got it started a couple of hours ago.
In this case "expensive" is applied to the amount of time consumed by putting this thing together and I still have a bit to go.
It was taken apart so completely that even the wiper blade springs were removed and I had to source even the dowels between the heads and block as well as the bellhousing dowels.
I got lucky and found a fuel pump check connector in the engine compartment and was able to simply connect it to battery positive to pump all 12 gallons of 5 year old fuel into gas cans and it was filtered by the car........clean and didn't smell as bad as I expected.
I tried the gas in the lawn mower and it ran great so the old gas went into the station wagon along with 4 gallons of high test............runs great.
The last hurdle in starting it was finding it had a top of the line clifford alarm system integrated into the EMS harness way up in the dash so I decided to try to work with it rather than bypass it.
When I took apart the key fob to replace the 7 year old battery I found surface mount integrated circuit chips and the battery clip rattling around in the case so it was time to fire up the hakko 471 desoldering station to clean it up and get to work remounting components.
Amazingly, it unlocked the doors and enabled injection and the engine started right away despite having been completely disassembled and sitting in boxes for 5 years.
I bill $168 per labor hour for my time and this car would have cost a fortune to put together properly.
Lucky it's mine.......or unlucky.
Don't drag race your VR-4......it will come out of the hole great many times......at the expense of driveline parts.
Right after I got it started and was striking muscle poses around the house, my sister called telling me her land rover defender had just arrived from Monrovia, Liberia........and I have a dyno dynamics twin retarder 2200hp dyno to rebuild next week and a car to prep. for another run at 300mph in a few weeks, two guitars for sale, two chorme drum sets for sale, two sweet snares for sale.....etc.
It's like baseball......lots of waiting around and suddenly a frenzied burst of activity.
